ISLAMABAD: Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko on Monday arrived in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, on an official three-day state visit to discuss bilateral cooperation.
President Lukashenko was received by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other officials, including Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, at Nur Khan Airbase.
According to Pakistan’s Foreign Office, the Belarusian president “will hold extensive talks with Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif and discuss areas of bilateral cooperation and engagement”. The one-on-one meeting will be followed by talks featuring the delegations of the parties.
The visit will focus on further expansion of mutually beneficial cooperation with an emphasis on practical steps to develop trade and economic interaction, Belarus’s official website BelTA reported.
According to BelTA, special attention will be paid to regional and global security, interaction in integration associations and joint work on international platforms.
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Before his arrival, a 75-member high-level delegation from Belarus arrived in Islamabad on Sunday, which included Belarusian foreign minister, minister for energy, minister for justice, minister for transport, minister for natural resources, minister for emergency situations, and chairman of the Military Industry Committee.
Additionally, 43 prominent business personalities of Belarus are also part of the delegation.
The parties will consider the most promising areas of cooperation and discuss a joint action plan for the future.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar held a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Maxim Ryzhenkov, wherein the two sides underlined the importance of bilateral relations and reaffirmed their commitment to promote mutually beneficial cooperation.
The two foreign ministers discussed bilateral and regional issues and the agenda and the programme of the visit of President Lukashenko to Pakistan, according to a Foreign Office press release.
The two sides expressed satisfaction over the momentum of bilateral exchanges and high-level visits between Pakistan and Belarus and expressed the hope that President Lukashenko’s visit would further boost bilateral relations.
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The ministers also discussed key regional and global developments, including the situation in the Middle East. They expressed their support for a peaceful resolution of conflicts and underlined the need for a coordinated approach to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza, the Foreign Office stated in its press release.
While addressing the ‘Pakistan Belarus Business Forum’ along with the Minister for Energy of the Republic of Belarus Mr Aleksei Kushnarenko, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Commence, Jam Kamal Khan said that the current trade volume between Pakistan and Belarus does not reflect the potential of the two countries’ economic capability, and both countries need to diversify their trade with each other capitalizing on the potential of their strong sectors.
All economic sectors are open to foreign investment and priority sectors for foreign investment include energy, infrastructure, telecommunications, manufacturing, minerals, ICT, agriculture, and many more, the minister said.
The minister said that eight B2B MoUs/Contracts will be signed during the Forum that reflects the complementarity of bilateral trade and these will pave the way forward for more to happen.
Meanwhile, Pakistan PM’s Coordinator on Climate Change, Romina Khurshid Alam and Belarusian Minister for natural resources and environmental protection, Sergey Maslyak have agreed to closely work together to boost cooperation for achieving common environmental sustainability and climate resilience-related goals, with a focus on eco-tourism, water conservation, circular economy, green technology transfer, exchange programmes, biodiversity conservation and climate change adaptation, an official press release stated.
Both the countries discussed development and protection of ecological tourism within protected areas like nature reserves, national parks and nature reservations.
Romina proposed collaboration on mitigation of climate change and adaptation emphasizing the potential for both countries to promote principles of green economy, circular economy and low carbon economy for environmental sustainability enhancing resource management, and creating economic opportunities.
